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WILLIAM PITT. 








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PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

1891. 



WILLIAM PITT. 








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DEC 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 

1891. 



V 



JJAszz 



Copyright, 1891, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 




WILLIAM PITT. 



Pitt, William, the second son of the great 
Earl of Chatham and of Lady Hester Grenville, 
was born at Hayes, near Bromley, in Kent, on 
28th May 1159. At the time of his 'birth his father 
was still in the House of Commons and in the very 
zenith of his fame, and the future statesman grew 
up amid associations and surroundings that were 
well fitted to foster that political ambition which 
was to be the guiding and almost the sole impulse of 
his life. His constitution in boyhood seemed very 
weak ; he was never sent to school, but his education 
advanced so rapidly under a private tutor, that he 
was able to enter Cambridge when only fourteen. 
He was then a shy, reserved boy of exceedingly 
precocious talents, of irreproachable morals, and of 
regular and studious habits, little drawn to college 
society and amusements, and already distinguished 
by a rare self-control and concentration of purpose. 
From his earliest youth political life was placed 
before him as his ideal, and all his studies con- 
verged to that end. He became an excellent 
classical scholar, but he valued the classical writers 
mainly as a school of language and of taste ; and it 
was observed how carefully he analysed their 
styles, noted down every just or forcible expres- 
sion, and compared the opposite speeches on the 
same subject, observing how each speaker met or 
evaded the arguments of his opponent. Like many 
others he found in Locke a great master of clear and 
accurate thinking. His father superintended his 
studies with much care, and it was remembered 
that he specially recommended to him the sermons 
of Barrow as models of style and reasoning, and 
the histories of Polybius and Thucydides as foun- 
tains of political wisdom; that he taught him 
elocution by making him declaim the grandest 
poetry in Shakespeare and the speeches of the 



4 PITT. 

fallen angels in the Paradise Lost; and that he 
exercised him in fluency by accustoming him to 
translate into flowing English long passages from 
the classical writers. To this last practice Pitt 
largely ascribed that amazing command of choice 
and accurate English in which he surpassed all his 
contemporaries. When little more than a boy he 
was an attentive and discriminating listener to the 
debates in parliament. He became thoroughly 
familiar with the matchless eloquence of his father, 
and together with his brother-in-law, Lord Mahon, 
he supported his father into the House of Lords on 
the 7th April 1778 on that memorable occasion 
Avhen Chatham delivered his last speech against the 
surrender of America, and fell down, stricken by 
mortal illness, on the floor of the House. 

Pitt was left with a patrimony of less than £300 
a year. He was called to the bar in the June of 
1780, and went on the Western Circuit, but in 
September parliament was dissolved, and he at once 
threw himself into politics. He stood for Cam- 
bridge University, but found himself at the bottom 
of the poll; his disappointment, however, was 
speedily allayed, for Sir James Lowther gave him 
a seat for his pocket-borough of Appleby, and Pitt 
entered the House of Commons on 23d January 1781. 

He came into the House bearing a name which 
was beyond all others revered by Englishmen, with 
the advantage of being in no way mixed up with 
the calamitous American war, and with talents 
that had already acquired an extraordinary matu- 
rity. The Tory ministry of Lord North was then 
tottering to its fall, crushed by the disasters in 
America, and confronted by an opposition which 
consisted of the Old Whigs who followed Rocking- 
ham, among whom Fox and Burke were conspicu- 
ous, and of a smaller body who had been especially 
attached to the fortunes of Chatham, and who 
were chiefly represented by Shelburne, Camden, 
and Barre. Pitt lost no time in throwing himself 
into the fray. He spoke on the 26th February 
with brilliant success in defence of Burke's Bill for 
Economical Preform, and on several successive 
occasions he assailed the falling ministry. He 
denounced the American war and the corrupt 
influence of the crown with extreme violence, but 
he refused to throw in his lot irrevocably with the 
party of the opposition, and shortly before the fall 
of North he publicly declared that he could not 
expect to bear a part in the coming ministry, as he 
' would never accept a subordinate position. ' The 



PITT. 5 

words are said to have escaped from him in the 
heat of the debate, and the House was startled and 
a little amused at the arrogance of a younor man 
who was not twenty-three, who was absolutely 
without official experience, and who had been little 
more than a year in parliament, declaring that he 
would accept no office except in the Cabinet. 

But Pitt had attained a position that placed him 
far above lasting ridicule. Fox spoke of him as 
already one of the first men in parliament. Burke 
said of him that he was not a chip of the old block, 
but the old block itself; Horace Walpole wrote 
that he had shown logical powers that made men 
doubt whether he might not prove superior even 
to Fox ; and when upon the resignation of North in 
March 1782 a ministry was formed under the 
leadership of Rockingham, combining the two 
sections of the opposition, Pitt remembered his 
pledge and refused several offers, among others the 
Vice-treasurership of Ireland with a salary of 
£5000 a year. He gave, however, a general and 
cordial support to the new ministers, but he at the 
same time brought forward the question of parlia- 
mentary reform, on which they were profoundly 
divided. It was a question which fell naturally to 
him, for his father had been one of the first to urge 
it. On the 7th May he moved, in a speech of great 
brilliancy, for a select committee to inquire into 
the state of the representation, and was only 
defeated by 161 to 141. He soon afterwards sup- 
ported a measure of Sawbridge for shortening the 
duration of parliament, and a measure of Lord 
Mahon for preventing bribery at elections. 

A close personal and political connection about 
this time grew up between Pitt and Henry Dundas, 
who had been Lord Advocate under North. It 
proved of great importance to the career of Pitt. 
Dundas had none or the intellectual brilliancy or of 
the moral dignity of the younger statesman, but he 
had one of the best political judgments of his time, 
he had great talents both for business and for 
debate, and he was a most shrewd and sagacious 
judge of the characters of men — a gift in which 
Pitt through his whole life was somewhat wanting. 

The Rockingham ministry lasted only for three 
months. The king detested it ; it was from the 
first profoundly divided, and a bitter personal and 
political animosity had broken out between Charles 
Fox and Lord Shelburne, its two most conspicuous 
members. On 1st July 1782 Lord Rockingham 
died, and the question of leadership at once broke 



6 PITT. 

up the party. Fox insisted on the leadership of 
the Duke of Portland, a wealthy and respectable, 
but perfectly undistinguished nobleman, who was 
then Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. The king gave 
the post of First Lord of the Treasury to Shelburne, 
who had an incomparably higher political position, 
and who had been a favourite friend and colleague 
of Chatham, though there were features in his 
character that already excited great unpopularity 
and distrust. Fox, with a considerable section of 
the Rockingham Whigs, at once resigned, and Pitt 
entered the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer 
in the reconstructed ministry. Public opinion 
generally blamed Fox, and one of the consequences 
of his resignation was that the House of Commons 
was divided into three distinct parties. There was 
the party of Fox, the party of North, and the party 
of the government, and no one of them could 
command a clear majority. A coalition of some 
kind was inevitable. Shelburne leaned towards an 
alliance with North, but Pitt positively refused to 
have any connection with the statesman whom he 
deemed responsible for the American war. Peace 
was not yet attained, but the negotiations which 
had been pursued by the preceding ministry were 
steadily pushed on. Provisional articles of peace 
between England and the United States wp 1 " - 
signed in November 1782, and preliminary articles 
with France and Spain in the following January, 
while a truce was established with Holland, and 
the first steps were taken towards a very liberal 
commercial treaty with the United States." 

Pitt bore a leading part in the debates in parlia- 
ment, and his reputation steadily rose, but the 
Shelburne ministry was weak, divided, and short- 
lived. The peace following a disastrous war 
necessarily involved sacrifices that were profoundly 
unpopular, and the character of Shelburne aggra- 
vated the divisions that had already appeared. 
Several resignations took place, but Pitt stood 
loyally by his chief, and endeavoured without 
success to induce Fox to rejoin the ministry. Fox, 
however, declared that he would never again serve 
any ministry with Shelburne for its head, and to 
the astonishment and indignation both of the king 
and of the country, he united with the very states- 
man whose expulsion from public power had been 
for years the main object of his policy, and whom 
he had repeatedly threatened with impeachment. 
North, irritated at the ostracism with which he had 
been threatened, readily entered into the alliance. 



PITT. 7 

Two factious votes of censure directed against the 
peace were carried through the Commons by 
majorities of 16 and 17, and on 24th February 1783 
Shelburne resigned. 

Pitt had displayed the most splendid parlia- 
mentary talents in the discussions that preceded 
the fall of the ministry, and although he could 
not overthrow the compact weight of parlia- 
mentary influence opposed to him, he profoundly 
moved the country and placed his own position 
beyond dispute. On the fall of the Shelburne 
ministry, the king, hoping to escape the yoke of 
the coalition, implored the young statesman to 
accept the leadership, and gave him an absolute 
authority to name his colleagues. It was a daz- 
zling offer, and Pitt was not yet twenty-four, but 
he already possessed a judgment and a self-restraint 
which is rarely found at any age in combination 
with such brilliancy and such courage, and he saw 
clearly that the moment of triumph had not yet 
come. After a long struggle and many abortive 
efforts the king was obliged to yield, and on the 2d 
April the coalition ministry was formed with the 
Duke of Portland as First Lord of the Treasury, 
and Fox and North as joint Secretaries of State. 

It commanded a large majority of the votes, and 
included a great preponderance of the ability in 
the House of Commons, but the king viewed it 
with a detestation amounting to loathing, and the 
nation was profoundly scandalised by the alliance 
on which it rested. Pitt was offeree! his old post 
of Chancellor of the Exchequer, which he peremp- 
torily refused. As leader of the opposition, he 
brought forward, in the form of resolutions, an 
elaborate scheme of parliamentary reform, includ- 
ing an increase of the county members. He was 
defeated by 293 to 149, but he at least succeeded in 
bringing Fox and North into direct collision. He 
brought forward another important measure for the 
reform of abuses in the public offices, which passed 
the Commons but was rejected in the Lords. The 
peace which was carried by the new ministry 
differed very little from that which they had 
censured when in opposition ; and very soon the bill 
of the government for subverting in some important 
respects the charter of the East India Company 
and reorganising the government of India, pro- 
duced another great change in the disposition of 
power. 

The feature of the scheme which chiefly excited 
indignation and alarm was the' creation by the 



I 



8 PITT. 

existing legislature of a new supreme body in 
England, consisting of seven commissioners who 
were to be immovable except by an address from 
either house for four years, and who were during 
that period to have an absolute control of the 
patronage of India. It was contended that this 
measure would give the party who were now in 
power an amount of patronage which would enable 
them to overbalance the influence of the crown, 
dominate the parliament, and control succeeding 
administrations. These objections were brought 
forward by Pitt with great power, but with 
extreme exaggeration, and the king and the nation 
were speedily alarmed. The India Bill passed by 
large majorities through the Commons, but when it 
came into the House of Lords the king authorised 
Lord Temple to say that he would consider any 
man his enemy who voted for the bill. The com- 
munication produced an immediate effect. The 
bill was rejected in the Lords by 95 to 76; the 
ministry refused to resign, and the House of 
Commons supported them by large majorities ; but 
the king peremptorily dismissed them on 18th 
December 1783, and next day it was announced 
that Pitt had been called to the head of affairs as 
Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the 
Treasury. | 

Pitt had already abundantly displayed his parlia- 
mentary ability, his judgment, and his discretion. 
He was now to display in the highest degree his 
courage. In the eyes of nearly all the best judges 
in England his position was a hopeless one, and his 
administration was likely to be even more brief 
than the three which had preceded it. There was 
a majority of more than a hundred against him in 
the Commons, and the parliamentary influence 
behind it was so great that an immediate dissolu- 
tion must have been disastrous. He was called to 
office by a grossly unconstitutional interference 
on the part of the king, and every day which he 
remained in office under the censure of the House 
of Commons added to the falseness of his position. 
Temple, on whom he had greatly relied, threw up 
the seals of Secretary of State which he had 
accepted, and in the House of Commons Pitt was 
himself at this time the only cabinet minister, 
while Dundas was the only considerable debater 
who supported him against the united attacks of 
North, Fox, Burke, and Sheridan. But Pitt 
fought his battle with a skill and a resolution that 
have never been surpassed in parliamentary history. 



PITT. 9 

A long succession of hostile votes was carried, but 
they failed to drive him from office, and soon un- 
equivocal signs appeared that the country was with 
him. The magnanimity with which at this critical 
period he refused to take for himself a great sine- 
cure office which fell vacant added greatly to his 
popularity. Addresses in his favour poured in from 
all the leading corporations in the country. The 
majorities against him grew steadily smaller. At 
last, on 25th March 1784, the long-deferred blow 
was struck. Parliament was dissolved, and an 
election ensued which swept away nearly 160 
members of the opposition, made Pitt one of the 
most powerful ministers in all English history, 
and prepared the way for a ministry which lasted' 
with a few months' intermission, for no less than 
twenty years. 

In this great and powerful ministry English 
political life assumed much of its modern aspect. 
The House of Commons acquired a new importance 
in the constitution, the people a new control over 
its proceedings, and the First Lord of the Treasury 
complete ascendency in the government. The 
system of ' king's friends ' controlling the ministry 
was finally destroyed, and when the chancellor, 
Lord 1 hurlow, attempted to perpetuate it, he was 
peremptorily dismissed. The skilful management 
of the regency question established the right of 
parliament to provide for the exercise of supreme 
power during the incapacity of the king. Direct 
parliamentary corruption was finally put down 
Great numbers of sinecure places were abolished 
and great reforms were introduced into the system 
of collecting the revenue and issuing public loans, 
lne government of India was reorganised on the 
system of a double government, which continued 
with little change till the abolition of the East 
India Company in 1858. The whole system of 
taxation and of trade duties was thoroughly revised 
and no minister since Walpole had approached Pitt 
in his complete competence in dealing with trade 
questions. The finances of the country, which had 
been extremely disorganised by the American war, 
became once -more flourishing. A commercial 
treaty, based upon more enlightened commercial 
doctrines than any English statesman, except 
bhelDurne, had yet adopted, was negotiated with 
t ranee. In foreign politics Pitt was for some years 
equally successful. Some troubles that had arisen 
with Spam were put down by a display of prompt 
and judicious firmness. In conjunction with 



10 PITT. 

Prussia a revolutionary movement in Holland 
which was fomented by French influence was 
suppressed, and the triple alliance of England, 
Prussia, and Holland contributed largely to ter- 
minate the wars between Sweden and Denmark 
and between the emperor and the Turks, though it 
met with a mortifying failure in its dealings with 
Russia. Pitt's love of peace was very sincere, but 
the influence of England in European councils rose 
greatly under his ministry, and he showed much 
decision and tact in extricating England from a 
dangerous complicity with the ambitious designs 
of her Prussian ally. Up to the time of the French 
Revolution there was no decline in his ascendency, 
his popularity, or his success. 

A few adverse criticisms, however, may be justly 
made. He cast aside too lightly on the first serious 
opposition parliamentary reform and the abolition 
of the slave-trade, and it became evident to good 
observers that he cared more for power than for 
measures, and was ready to sacrifice great causes 
with which he had sincerely sympathised and which 
he might have carried, rather than raise an opposi- 
tion that might imperil his ascendency. His once 
famous Sinking Fund is now universally recog- 
nised to have been thoroughly vicious in its prin- 
ciple ; and in the latter part of his career it led him 
to the absurdity of borrowing largely at high 
interest in order to pay off a debt that had been 
contracted at low interest. His attempt to estab- 
lish free trade between England and Ireland failed 
through an explosion of manufacturing jealousy 
in England, which obliged him to modify his 
original propositions in a way which was unpala- 
table to the Irish. More real blame attaches to 
him for his opposition to all serious measures to 
remedy the enormous abuses in the Irish parlia- 
ment and for the great uncertainty of his policy 
towards the Irish Catholics. The great evils which 
grew up in England in his time in connection with 
the sudden development of the factory system 
appear never to have attracted his attention, and 
he made no effort to mitigate them. He created 
peerages with extreme lavishness . and with very 
little regard to merit, and although his patronage 
was not positively corrupt, few ministers have 
shown themselves more indifferent to the higher 
interests of literature, science, and art. 

When the French Revolution broke out his 
policy was one of absolute neutrality towards the 
contending parties, and this neutrality he most 



PITT. 11 

faithfully observed. He wholly failed, however, to 
understand the character and the supreme impor- 
tance of the Revolution. He believed that it was 
merely a passing disturbance, and that its prin- 
cipal effect would be to deprive France for some 
years of all serious influence in European affairs, 
ami almost to the eve of the great war he was 
reducing the armaments of England. There is no 
real doubt that he was forced most reluctantly into 
war by the aggressive policy of France in Flanders 
and towards Holland ; but he drew the sword 
believing that France was so disorganised and 
bankrupt that a struggle with her would be both 
short and easy ; he was almost wholly destitute 
of the kind of talents that are needed for a war- 
minister, and he had to contend with an almost 
unexampled outburst of military enthusiasm, and 
soon after with the transcendent genius of Napo- 
leon. His belief in the probable shortness of the 
war and in the efficacy of his sinking fund, led him 
into the great error of raising his war expenses in 
the first stages of the war almost wholly by loans, 
and thus laying the foundation of an enormous 
increase of debt. His military enterprises were 
badly planned and badly executed, and he had 
none of his father's skill in discovering and bring- 
ing forward military talent. For some years it 
is true his ascendency in parliament continued to 
increase. The great Whig schism of 1794 and 
the secession of Fox reduced the opposition to 
utter insignificance. But even in his domestic 
measures Pitt was no longer fortunate. Through 
fear of the revolutionary spirit which had infected 
some portions of the population, he was led into 
repressive measures very little in harmony with 
his earlier career. Corn had risen to famine price, 
and great distress prevailed, and the government 
attempted to meet it by very ill-conceived relaxa- 
tions of the poor-laws — by levying rates for the 
purpose of increasing wages, and by granting 
parochial relief in proportion to the number of 
children in a family, and thus offering a direct 
premium to improvident marriages. In Ireland 
disaffection was steadily growing, and Pitt tried 
to win the Catholics by measures of conciliation, 
and especially by the concession of the suffrage ; 
but the opposition of the king, divided councils, 
and the vacillation of his own mind impaired 
his policy, and the injudicious recall at a very 
critical moment of a popular viceroy contributed 
largely to the savage rebellion of 1798. He then 



12 PITT. 

tried to place Irish affairs on a sound basis by 
a legislative union which was to be followed by 
Catholic emancipation, the payment of the priests, 
and a commutation of tithes. The first measure 
was carried by very corrupt means, but the king, 
who had not been informed of the ultimate in- 
tentions of his minister, declared himself inexo- 
rably opposed to Catholic emancipation, which he 
deemed inconsistent with his coronation oath. 
Pitt resigned his office into the hands of his fol- 
lower Addington in February 1801 ; but a month 
later, on hearing that the agitation of the Catholic 
question had for a time overthrown the totter- 
ing intellect of the king, he declared that he 
would abandon the Catholic question during the 
remainder of the reign, and he resumed office in 
May 1804 on the understanding that he would 
not suffer it to be carried. His last ministry was 
a melancholy and a humiliating one. The war, 
which had been suspended by the peace of Amiens, 
had broken out with renewed vehemence. There 
was great danger of invasion, and Pitt earnestly 
desired to combine the most eminent men of all 
parties in the ministry ; but the king forbade 
the admission of Fox. The principal followers of 
Fox refused to join without their chief, and Lord 
Grenville and his followers took the same course. . 
Grenville, who had long been one of Pitt's ablest 
colleagues, was now completely alienated. A junc- 
tion with Addington was effected, but it lasted 
only for a short time, and it added little to the 
strength of the ministry. Dundas, Pitt's oldest 
friend and colleague, had been lately made Viscount 
Melville. He was placed at the head of the Admi- 
ralty ; but a charge of misappropriating public 
funds was raised against him, and in 1805 he was 
driven ignominiously from office. Pitt's own health 
was now broken. His spirits had sunk ; the spell 
which had once surrounded him had in a great 
degree passed away, and although the victory of 
Trafalgar saved England from all immediate 
danger of invasion, the disasters of Ulm and 
Austerlitz threw a dark cloud over his closing- 
scene. He died in his forty-seventh year on 23d 
January 1806. The House of Commons by a great 
majority voted him a public funeral and a monu- 
ment in Westminster Abbey. 

He was never married, and he never mixed much 
in general society ; but in all his private relations 
he was pure, amiable, simple, and attractive. He 
was a warm friend. His temper was very equable, 



PITT. 13 

and till near the close of his life very cheerful. He 
had much ready wit, and he could easily throw off 
the cares of office, and even join heartily in the 
games of boys. He maintained to the last his 
familiarity with the classics, but his serious 
interests were exclusively political. He only once 
crossed the Channel, and lie appears to have been 
wholly untouched by the great contemporary 
currents of literature and non-political thought. 
He was not free from the prevailing vice of hard 
drinking, and he has been justly blamed for having 
allowed his great indifference to money to degener- 
ate into a culpable carelessness. In 1801 some of 
his friends subscribed £12,000 towards the payment 
of his debts, and in the following year he sold 
Holwood, his country place. But these measures 
proved wholly insufficient. With no extravagant 
tastes, with no family to support, with no expen- 
sive elections, and with an official income of at 
least £10,000 a year, he left £40,000 of debt, which 
was paid by the nation. In public he was cold 
and repellent, and there was something theatrical 
in the unvaried dignity of his demeanour ; but few 
men possessed to a higher degree the power of 
commanding, directing, and controlling, and he 
inspired the nation with an unbounded confidence 
both in his character and in his abilities. England 
has seen no greater parliamentary leader" few 
greater masters of financial and commercial legisla- 
tion, and he was one of the first statesmen to adopt 
the teaching of Adam Smith. If his eloquence was 
very diffuse, if it showed little imagination, or 
depth or originality of thought, it was at least 
supremely adapted to all the purposes of debate, 
and it rarely failed in its effect. He was, in a 
word, a great peace-minister; but in the latter part 
of his life an evil fate brought him face to face with 
problems which he never wholly understood and 
with difficulties which he was very little fitted to 
encounter. 

His political life has been written in much detail by 
Tomhne and by Gifford; but by far the fullest and best 
biography of him which has yet appeared is that of Lord 
Stanhope. Lord Macaulay has made him the subject of 
a well-known biographical essay, and Mr Goldwin Smith 
of two brilliant lectures, and the reader may consult with 
profit the recent monograph of Mr Walford. The career 
of Pitt, however, is indissolubly intertwined with the 
whole English history of his time, and it is in connection 
with that history that it may be best studied. 



